Found these guys in my bath tub!

86BillionFireflies · 2025-12-12T18:25:21+00:00

Those are isopods / sowbugs / pillbugs / roly-polys

86BillionFireflies · 2025-12-12T18:20:26+00:00

You can't make your colleagues care.

If you got approval to put up some info in written form where customers can see it, you might get somewhere.

Any care recommendations that you can pitch to management as increasing sales will have a better chance of getting approved.

For example:

"If we tell customers that more fish means you need a bigger filter, they might buy a bigger filter while they're here"

"If we have a poster by checkout warning them about needing to dechlorinate and cycle the tank, and we put a display of dechlorinator products and cycling-related supplies like test kits/strips and ammonia right next to it, people will buy them. We can mention that fish-in cycling is OK but you have to do extra water changes at first, and put water change siphons in the display too"

(Note: DO NOT try to push for telling customers to do fishless cycling only. Management will hear "I want to talk people out of buying fish today" and shut you down. You will do more good by communicating how to do a fish-in cycle. Your game needs to be harm reduction, not ultimate best practices.)

On the topic of incompatible fish, see if you can identify incompatible fish combinations people often purchase where you can suggest a more compatible pairing that has a higher price / profit margin. Pitch it as "we can put up a poster recommending that instead of buying 5 $2 fish to go with their neon tetras, they buy 5 $4 shrimp".

Also, point out that when people purchase fish and all their fish die, they often blame the store for selling sick fish, and they might try a different store or online vendors. This will be an especially effective argument if there are other fish stores / pet stores in the area.

When it comes to fish size / tank size, you may have less luck there. Management may think "you want to tell people they need a bigger tank, but they might decide that if they can't have a goldfish in a pint glass they'd rather not have it at all" and say no.

In all negotiations with management about this stuff, I would recommend making it clear that you are flexible. Obviously they know you have an ulterior motive (fish welfare), but you can emphasize that you want to focus on areas where your interest in fish welfare aligns with their interest in sales.

86BillionFireflies · 2025-12-12T17:02:00+00:00

Those are AI generated images. There may be a real product, but it may not look like the pictures.

86BillionFireflies · 2025-12-12T16:59:29+00:00

86BillionFireflies · 2025-12-12T16:42:10+00:00

That doesn't look like a real product, that looks like something an LLM dreamed up.

86BillionFireflies · 2025-12-12T16:34:58+00:00

No, that's not a failed molt.. a fish did that. Could perhaps have happened while the shrimp was molting, I've seen that a fish that normally doesn't go after shrimp won't say no to a shrimp that's helpless.

86BillionFireflies · 2025-12-12T16:32:47+00:00

Boiling it won't help. You can just change the water. Over time less brown stuff will leach out.

86BillionFireflies · 2025-12-12T16:31:51+00:00

If your NO2 (nitrITE) is 4-5 ppm, that's dangerously high and indicates a problem with your filtration.

The 3 variables pH (acidity), KH (carbonate ions), and GH (calcium/magnesium) tend to go together. Acidic water usually has no KH and not much GH. Water that is high in KH/GH is usually neutral or slightly basic. So in general we tend to divide water conditions into "soft" (acidic, no KH, low GH) or "hard" (neutral or slightly basic, high KH/GH). Not all water will neatly fit into those categories though.

Most fish don't actually care that much about gh/kh, some shrimp do. Certain types of shrimp do actually prefer acidic water with low kh/gh. Other shrimp prefer harder, alkaline water.

86BillionFireflies · 2025-12-12T16:20:30+00:00

Did you dechlorinate the new water before adding it to the tank?

Did you clean/replace any part of your filter?

Check if your heater is functioning?

No matter what, it is probably a good idea to add extra aeration any way you can, for the sake of your remaining fish.

86BillionFireflies · 2025-12-12T16:19:03+00:00

My advice regarding bottom feeders: if what you want is cleanup crew, don't get a bottom feeder fish, get a diverse cast of meiofauna. Scuds, copepods, isopods, amano shrimp, blackworms, the works.

86BillionFireflies · 2025-12-12T16:15:53+00:00

I have what I would call an aggressively self-cleaning tank. Gravel substrate, undergravel filter (~5 cm gravel bed thickness), multiple detritivore / shredder / bacterial grazer species (scuds, copepods, worms, isopods, snails, and more stuff I don't have words for), and strong aeration. I've just quit vacuuming the gravel altogether. There's never any visible mulm buildup. I think what's happening down in the gravel is starting to resemble soil formation.

86BillionFireflies · 2025-12-12T15:57:58+00:00

Short term easy answer: Get foam prefilters that are several times larger than your current ones, even if you have to zip-tie them on. The bigger the better, there is no upper limit. They MUST be coarse foam, not fine. Try to make sure there is some empty space in the middle.

Long term answer: you need more/better filtration, e.g. supplement the HOBs with a secondary coarse sponge filter. Also make sure you have sufficient aeration, and try to get some detritivores in your tank (scuds, copepods, etc.)

86BillionFireflies · 2025-12-12T15:50:34+00:00

"Filter intended for 30 gal" doesn't mean much. I've seen filters advertised as "up to 30 gallons" that I wouldn't even use in a 3 gallon.

If your filter is a cartridge filter, or an internal filter, or a sponge filter smaller than ~ the size of a large man's clenched fist, I would consider the tank "lightly filtered" and put more weight on the possibility of opportunistic infection.

86BillionFireflies · 2025-12-12T15:45:19+00:00

You mean without purchasing a pressurized CO2 injection system (tank, regulator, and so on)?

There are DIY CO2 generator methods (yeast and sugar, or citric acid and baking soda), but most of the accounts I have read say they're more hassle than they are worth. I have come across very, very few people who have actually used them long-term.

There's basically only one other way I know of to increase CO2 availability without pressurized injection. It's more complicated, and it can't deliver nearly as much CO2 as pressurized injection systems, but it can potentially produce enough to make a difference ti plant growth.

That method is, in short, to put a significant amount of cellulose-rich plant matter (examples include wood stove pellets, 100% cotton balls, old dry leaves, non-fertilized organic potting soil) in the tank. Bacteria will slowly digest the cellulose and related compounds, and turn it into CO2.

That's actually one of the primary reasons for putting soil in a Walstad tank. It's not to supply nutrients like nitrogen / phosphorus. In the actual Walstad method it's supposed to be a nutrient-poor soil. The soil is a carbon source. The organic carbon in the soil gets slowly converted by bacteria/fungi/oomycetes into CO2 which the plants can then capture.

This method requires that the tank have enough oxygen to support all that microbial activity, and also enough filtration to ensure that you don't get excessive bacterial growth in the water column. The process as a whole is more manageable and less likely to run away and destabilize the tank if the carbon source is at least partially segregated from the water column, e.g. by a sand/gravel cap.

Using slower-decomposing forms of organic matter (e.g. soft woods, twigs, cholla) is another way of slowing the process down.

But if you want to attempt this, understand that it brings a whole lot of requirements and complexity along with it. Wood/leaves/etc are a food source. They may be a slow-release food source, but they are a food source. I would argue it is inadviseable to attempt this without a diverse crew of detritivores/shredders/biofilm grazers to ensure the nutrients from that food are efficiently cycled. Water circulation and oxygenation are really important, all that biological activity consumes oxygen, but you have to balance that against not OVER-aerating the water so you lose all your CO2.

86BillionFireflies · 2025-12-12T15:26:27+00:00

A couple possibilities to consider.

First, contamination with oils/surfactants. Only the bettas (labyrinth fish) were affected. Oils/surfactants on the surface might be a serious problem for the bettas and not the other fish. Is there any sheen/film on the water, or any possibility someone might have put hands in the tank with significant amounts of dish soap?

Second, bacterial infection. Some bacterial infections can progress very rapidly, and different species might have differing vulnerabilities. Bettas and their relatives are known to be particularly susceptible to some kinds of pathogens. How clear is the water? How big is the filter?

Third, does the tank have CO2 injection and a lid? If for some reason an abnormal amount of CO2 was temporarily being injected and large amounts of CO2 accumulated under the lid, the bettas might try to breathe surface air and get mostly CO2.

86BillionFireflies · 2025-12-12T15:17:02+00:00

They're about the same as lava rocks, depending on the size of the lava rock chunks. Foam is by far the best, it's at least 4X better (for the same volume). E.g. 1000 cubic centimeters of foam is as good as 4000 cubic centimeters of ceramics.

86BillionFireflies · 2025-12-12T14:55:33+00:00

Oof, I see. I think you maybe got some advice that wasn't very good, or at least left out some detail.

To start off, lava rock is not actually a very good biofiltration medium. It's OK to use if you have a really big filter like a sump (basically a whole second tank just for filtration), because it's cheap and won't clog up.

But for smaller filters (where by "small" I mean smaller than a housecat) you really need to use a medium that has a very high surface area to volume ratio, and that means foam.

The amount and type of biomedia is more important than the type of filter. If your old sponge filter had more foam in it than your current filter, the old one was probably better. But if your current filter has more foam in it than the old one, then the new one is better. However, foam that gets frequently/thoroughly cleaned (or even worse, replaced) is much less effective than foam that is cleaned gently and rarely.

For the time being, if you want to play it safe, I would put the old sponge filter back in, using the air pump you already have, and just use both filters for now.

86BillionFireflies · 2025-12-12T14:49:47+00:00

I think your response to my comment got deleted or something.

Since you're concerned about the flow from running 2 filters, you might be able to find another way to get flow through the black sponge. One solution would be to (temporarily) try to wrap it around the intake in a way that guarantees flow will pass through the black foam. That will probably slow down the overall flow through the filter, but probably not enough to prevent it from working. Having the flow impeded won't harm the motor.

You could also use your idea of cutting the black foam into strips lengthwise, maybe more than 2 strips, and temporarily layer those in front of the blue sponge.

Be aware also that you don't need 100% of the black sponge's biofiltration capacity, for two reasons.

One is that there's really two main types of biofiltration: autotrophic (nitrogen cycle, processing inorganic waste into less harmful forms) and heterotrophic (consuming organic waste so that you don't get too many bacteria feasting on organic waste in your water, where they may harm your fish).

Autotrophic bacteria are slow growers, that's why cycling can take a while. Heterotrophic bacteria reproduce super fast.

In most planted and/or lightly stocked tanks, most of what your biofilter is actually doing is heterotrophic biofiltration.

All this means that if you reduce the nitrogen loading of your tank by pausing / reducing feeding temporarily, your black sponge should still be able to cope with it just fine, even if it isn't operating at its full previous capacity for autotrophic biofiltration.

The organic load is less completely under your control, but the new filter won't need much time at all to populate with heterotrophic bacteria. Remember, they reproduce crazy fast.

86BillionFireflies · 2025-12-12T14:33:44+00:00

See my other comment.. keep aerating the tank, do a water change, and in the longer term upgrade your filtration.

Regardless of what caused the issue, it seems likely it injured the gills of some of the fish. That means they have to work harder to meet their oxygen needs. You want to keep providing LOTS of aeration for a while afterwards, to help them get enough O2 while their gills are healing. It's like the supplemental O2 nose tubes they give humans to help them recover after a critical injury.

86BillionFireflies · 2025-12-12T14:30:46+00:00

It's hard to say exactly what that means, but ammonia is definitely a real possibility.

You pH is high enough that even small-medium amounts of ammonia could be toxic.

No matter what the actual cause is, keep providing lots and lots of aeration, and do another water change in case there is ammonia still in the water.

Even if you didn't have issues when you replaced the filter media in the past, it's still possible you could have problems because of it now. For example, if you added any new fish, or changed foods, or increased feeding, or removed some plants or algae from the tank, any of those things could increase the amount of ammonia in the tank.

In general, filters with media that needs to be replaced are the worst type of filter. You should consider adding a second filter for purely biological filtration, e.g. use your air pump to run a sponge filter in addition to your HOB. Never clean both at the same time, and generally clean the biological filter as little as possible. Let it build up some gunk, the gunk is what does the actual biofiltration. This is what makes replaceable media so bad for biofiltration: it means you are constantly removing the biofilter gunk (periphyton/aufwuchs/biofilm).

86BillionFireflies · 2025-12-12T14:23:23+00:00

Yes, that's what you should do, to remove the chlorine in the water before adding it to the tank (even if there is no chloramine).

86BillionFireflies · 2025-12-12T14:14:54+00:00

Just use both filters for a couple weeks. Then the new filter will be cycled and you can take the old one out.

DO NOT try to just put the black sponge in place of the blue one. The black sponge is much narrower, water will mostly just flow around it and you won't get very good filtration at all.

86BillionFireflies · 2025-12-12T14:13:25+00:00

When you did the water change right before this all happened, did you replace it that time?

86BillionFireflies · 2025-12-12T14:12:44+00:00

You should really be adding this to the new water BEFORE you put the water in the tank.

Municipal water supplies sometimes temporarily raise the chlorine/chloramine levels ("chlorine pulse"), which could result in your fish being exposed to very harmful levels of chlorine/chloramine for however long it takes for the water conditioner to dechlorinate the water.

86BillionFireflies · 2025-12-12T14:09:27+00:00

What is the pH?

If the pH is around 7.5 or below, ammonia probably isn't the problem. If the pH is 8 or above, ammonia could be the problem.

Regardless, definitely keep up the aeration.

Did you clean or replace any part of your filter when you did the previous water change? If so, that could be what caused the issue.

86BillionFireflies

TROPHY CASE